According to Drury (The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, 2003), Leo Strauss’ ideology, neoconservatism, which influences Michael Shawcross (the current head of the Charities Commission), George Osborn, Michael Gove and his friend Douglas Murray (i.e. the people around the Prime Minister),
“…endorse[s] Machiavellian tactics in politics – not just lies and manipulation of public opinion, but every manner of unscrupulous conduct necessary to keep the masses in a state of heightened alert, afraid for their lives and their families, and therefore willing to sacrifice themselves for the nation.”
To maintain this state of secrecy and to manipulate public knowledge, the media must play a key part. This of course undermines democracy as the freedom of the press is imperative in maintaining checks and balances and ensuring the protection of citizens against government abuses. In the ideal world, such freedom of the press would be a given, but as I have already argued, the current government and indeed the undercurrent neoconservative ideology has done nothing but shatter the ideal and is heading towards latent tyranny.
Under the guise of the narrative of “Islamist extremism” the government and its officials such as the governmentally recognised extremist Theresa May, have eroded the civil liberties to the point that the mechanisms to maintain the checks and balances are being weakened. David Miranda, Edward Snoden and Moazzam Begg have been demonised, arrested and illegally detained for supporting, in essence “British values”.
To protect governmental secrets, according to journalists themselves, the journalists are being treated like terrorists.
Sarah Harrison, the investigations editor for Wikileaks is another victim of the government’s collusion in destroying British values. She is currently in Berlin and is now unable to travel back to the UK because of her connection with Julian Assange and Edward Snoden. She argues that the Terrorism Act is being employed against journalistic endeavours,
“In addition, if schedule 7 is used to stop me upon entering the country, I could not answer such questions or relinquish anything, as this would be a risk to WikiLeaks’s journalistic work, our people and our sources. As I would have no right to silence under this act, I would be committing a crime in the government’s eyes… Schedule 7 is not really about catching terrorists, even in its own terms.”
Harrison hits on the reality of what the government is doing:
“It is now decreed by our courts that it is acceptable to interfere with the freedom of the press, based on a hunch – all in the name of “national security”. Today instead of meaning “to ensure the stability of a nation for its people”, national security is a catchphrase rolled out by governments to justify their own illegalities, whether that be invading another country or spying on their own citizens. This act – it is now crystal clear – is being consciously and strategically deployed to threaten journalists. It has become a tool for securing the darkness behind which our government can construct a brand new, 21st-century Big Brother.”
The Government she concludes, has ridden “roughshod over our traditions.”
The Muslim minority was aware of this point due to the blatant bias hurled at them on a daily basis through reports by the BBC and the broader media. It has now become evident in mainstream journalism that the,
“BBC is stacked full of right-wing journalists. The chairman of the BBC Trust is Chris Patten, a former Conservative cabinet minister. The BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, was once chairman of the Young Conservatives. His former senior political producer, Thea Rogers, became [neoconservative] George Osborne’s special advisor in 2012. Andrew Neil, the presenter of the BBC’s flagship political programmes Daily Politics and This Week, is chairman of the conservative Spectator magazine. His editor is Robbie Gibb, former chief of staff to the Tory Francis Maude. After the BBC’s economics editor Stephanie Flanders left for a £400,000-a-year job at that notorious leftwing hotbed, JP Morgan, she was replaced by its business editor Robert Peston. His position was taken by Kamal Ahmed from the right-wing Sunday Telegraph, a journalist damned by the Guardian’s Nick Davies for spinning government propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq war.”
The attacks on the BBC by the right-wing for pandering to the left are in fact a smokescreen to reinforce the neoconservative narrative. The notion of BBC promulgating a mainly pro-neocon narrative is supported by a study which concludes that the reports by the BBC are more in favour of the establishment with them being pro-conservative.
The reality is only now hitting on the ground, but the Muslim minority has felt the pangs of the neocon deception and undermining of principles of democracy and human rights for over a decade. If there ever was a need to fight an extremism in Britain, it is the neoconservative extremism and the present government which has forced its citizens to become transparent as it becomes opaque itself. The international image of Britain as supporter of democracy and human rights is nothing but a sham to further the interests of an elite few.
As Drury aptly states:
“They [the neocons] really have no use for liberalism and democracy, but they’re conquering the world in the name of liberalism and democracy,”
CoolnessofHind 